Scratchboard Experiments

I ran across some amazing scratchboard + inktense art  (check these out, rah-bop on deviantArt and that's just her first one, check out her gallery!, and Karen Hull -- WOW!) that I thought was absolutely mind-blowing.  I had those scratchboard kits before and sorta liked them, and I'm enjoying my toned ink on black paper, so I thought this might be something I'd like.  Before I go investing in the stuff to do this (I tend to get a million crazy ideas, buy the stuff, and only some of them come to fruition), I thought I'd pick up one of those cheap scratchboard kits with the art already done on the top for you, you just go over it and scratch it out.  And it was on clearance, yay!

 

Sure 'nuff, I like doing the texture on these.  This particular one is not the plaster that the Ampersand Scratchboard is, but a metallic stuff underneath.  So the ink didn't become one with the board the way I assume it will with the plaster.  It actually stuck better than I expected, though.

 

Most likely, more experiments forthcoming on this front.

Wholeness

We are all aware of the bias built into the Western idea that the mind is totally in the head, a function of the brain.  But your body is not there just to carry around your head."  -- Dr Candace Pert

On my "currently reading" list (I rarely read one book at a time) are two books.  One was recommended to me by my doctor.  It's called Divided Mind by Dr. John Sarno.  The premise is that for many, many people, the physical symptoms they experience, in a wide range of things from reflux to back/neck pain to fibromyalgia and depression, have their root in the conscious mind trying to suppress "unacceptable" emotions in the unconscious mind. 

I have an odd assortment of symptoms, myself.  Chronic neck pain, occasionally depression, and a host of systemic symptoms that I can't explain.  I asked my doctor whether, if I went to another doctor, he'd be likely to diagnose me with fibromyalgia.  He said, "Not likely... 100%."  He told me that Dr. Sarno's books are the reason he became a doctor, and that I needed some sort of integrative medicine.

The other book, The Tao of Equus by Linda Kohanov, is a re-read for me.  It talks about something she invented called equine-assisted psychotherapy.  Because horses are so attuned to nonverbal cues, they are aware when someone is acting incongruently.... putting on a smile when there is turmoil underneath.  As a result, she uses horses to help people who have spent so long burying their negative emotions that they don't even recognize them anymore.  I fall into this category, for sure.

The two of these books together have connected a lot of dots for me, and I have decided that the way out of pain, for me, encompasses two things.... Art, and also my horses.  I won't go into detail about some of the awesome experiences I've had since I decided to start working with them again.  They are my integrative medicine... physical, emotional, mental, spiritual.

Yesterday this image came to me in meditation.  The concept of Yin and Yang means that things are not black and white.  There is a little of this in that, and a little of that in this.  Dark and light, passive and active, spiritual and physical, female and male.  The intent of this painting is that you cannot separate mental/spiritual from physical.  They both affect one another.  Once you accept everything, there is wholeness... and healing.

Watercolors To Go

"Art is when you hear a knocking from your soul — and you answer.” ~Terri Guillemets

Love that quote.  It's what I believe is the essence of art.  Art isn't about reproducing an image of a thing (at least not anymore, in this age of digital photography and camera phones).  It's about following your soul's music.

Yesterday my son Brandon and I went to Hobby Lobby to find a light for my friend Joe's art table (a birthday present).  We didn't find a good one.  I had to drop Bran off at a doctor's appointment and I was going to run errands while he was there, but something grabbed me and said, Go back to Hobby Lobby, get yourself some watercolors you can take with you and paint on a whim.

So that's what I did.  I picked up this cuuuuuute little paint box (it's less than 6 inches across) by Windsor & Newton.  The really cool thing about it is, if those colors don't jive with the palette I want to use, I can take them out and order different ones to replace them.  Doesn't it look... well, way too pretty and not messy enough, yet. 

Whenever I get new paints I do these little charts.  The cramped little space at the bottom is the new paints.  Even though I have this thing about cake watercolors that says, "those are for kindergartners," these seem to be actually much better quality than anything I currently have in a tube. 

In other incredibly awesome news, my mom is painting now.  She recently retired and is taking a watercolor class.  She's one of those people who wanted to be an artist, and whose parents told her, "Do something practical, I'm not supporting any starving artist."  So she learned to type and spent 50 years doing that.  Now she's answering 'the knocking from her soul,' and I'm so excited for her.  And my son Brandon will be an Art major as of fall.  I'd like to think I had a little to do with inspiring both of them. :)

Two images occurred to me while I was meditating today.  This is the first.  I'm sure you can tell it's going to be a yin/yang symbol.  Green = body, blue = spirit.  That's all I'll say for now, since I only have layer one completed.

The other is a girl on horseback (bareback, but you probably won't be able to specifically see that), obviously at a gallop, but a closeup of her bent over the horse's neck, with mane and hair flying in the wind, intermingled.

I want to do an Equine Tarot, and this latter image may end up becoming one of the cards.  I just haven't decided if I want to do the images in oil, or watercolor.  I am far more adept at oils, but... I dunno.  We'll see who is there when I open the door.

Testing, Testing, Check, Check

I know, I'm all over the place. I can't help but try a little of everything this month. So far oil (my "comfort zone" medium), watercolor, pastel/colored pencil, and today, painting with a palette knife. 

 

There's a side view so you can see the texture on this thing. Also the first time I've tried anything like still life.

As far as painting with a knife, it will definitely take some getting used to. I couldn't get my colors for the inside of the lamp the way I wanted them... I mixed and scrapped three colors that ended up looking muddy to me.  

 

How do you get brighter without paler? Is it even possible?  It feels like I should know this.  I'm such a noob.

Anyway, experiment #5 accomplished. I will definitely be playing with this some more, I think I like it... Probably some more organic subject next time. Lines are hard and in watching my knife idol Leonid Afremov at work, I think they're meant to be blurred anyway.

Maybe a bigger canvas, too... This felt pretty cramped. 

 

Watercolor Experiments

I figured if I'm going to manage to do anything in watercolor this month, I could use a day to just mess around with the paint and see how it behaves. So first, a color chart like the one I did for oil.

Next, I experimented with random brush strokes and different degrees of wetness. 

Then, some washes. 

 

And finally, I wanted to see how it works if I start with a pencil sketch and actually tried to make watercolor do something recoginizable. So I painted this dragon's eye on ACEO watercolor paper. I plan to ink in some details later.

Brought to you by that oh-so-tantalizing glimpse of Smaug's eye at the end of The Hobbit movie. Waiting for the second movie is torture.

So there you have it, my no pressure experiments with watercolor, really the first time I've played with it at all. I plan to play with two books this month as far as my watercolor attempts... Stephanie Pui Mun Law's Dreamscapes: Creating Magical Angel, Faery & Mermaid Worlds With Watercolor (I have been a fan of Stephanie's work for over a decade), and Step By Step Guide To Painting Realistic Water Colors by Dawn McLeod Heim.

Let the challenge begin!

Prep Work

I roughed in my first 7 paintings for the challenge. Five of them are ACEOs, one 4x4, one 5x7. None of them are much to look at, at the moment. This is the only one that makes some vague sense:

 

 I don't know why this app insists on rotating it.

Interestingly, this ACEO paper seems to dry faster than canvas. And I love my black gesso. It's a lot cheaper, especially on large canvas, to base coat it with black rather than using expensive oil paint to make a dark background. Not to mention it dries super fast.

Maybe I should explain what an ACEO is.  It stands for Art Cards, Editions and Originals, and they're also called ATCs (Art Trading Cards).  You can browse the Art Cards site to check some out, and you can also find lots of them on Etsy. 

They have one main rule - they must be 3.5 x 2.5 inches, the size of a trading card.  Collecting them is a cool way to buy affordable art (they're affordable because they're so small), and support artists, without breaking the bank.  They can be any subject, any media, or mixed media.  If you make them, I'd be open to trading, just because it's fun :)

If you buy some, check to see whether you're getting an original or a print, just so you're aware. 

Because I'm trying to crank out 30 paintings in the next month, and because I've always wanted to dabble in making ACEOs, I plan to do a significant number of these this month in oil (mainly), watercolor, pastel, maybe colored pencil, and probably a few Zentangles and other similar stream-of-consciousness art (expect spirals... I love spirals).  You may even see wire show up on a few of them, since my main art at the moment is jewelry.

A good start, I think, and some of the work I've been doing for the past few weeks is close to being done too.  Wish me luck! :)

True Colors

I was listening to the Artists Helping Artists podcast the other day. The painter - Hedi Moran - said that she gets her vibrant colors by painting an undercoat in transparent paints.

This really was not something I had paid much attention to. I tend to mix a lot of titanium white into my colors, which means that they are all opaque, for the most part, with the exception of some of my greens and blues.

So today I pulled out some canvas paper and wrote the names of each of the paints I own, with a black line to paint over so that I can gauge the transparency of the color. I made these little charts, which I think will be very handy to refer to while I'm painting.

I definitely want to experiment with this concept of a transparent underpainting. Karen showed me how to do a burnt sienna underpainting (burnt sienna seems to be at least semi transparent) and I love starting a painting that way.

I got a Hobby Lobby gift certificate for Christmas... I may use it to buy more transparent colors.